If Twitter Removes Character Limit, How Will Marketers Benefit?

There’s a lot of buzz around Twitter right now. Rumors are circulating that the social media site will lift the restriction of updates being 140 characters or less in the coming months and allow — wait for it — up to 10,000 characters in a tweet.

If this puts your head in a spin, you’re not alone. Initially, I was not keen on the idea, but the more research I’ve done, the more I think it’ll work out. And face it: social media is an ever-changing beast. We have no choice but to adapt. So let’s look at some of the ways we can get more out of the new Twitter.

1. You Can Better Engage with Followers

Let’s be honest: it’s hard to stand out when you’re competing against thousands of other tweets published every millisecond. My Twitter stream looks like a hoarder’s house. I’m never going to see all the tweets that my contacts share. But if tweets are bigger (think how they look now with a photo attached), you’ll be able to catch more people’s attention.

Consider: people can, at a glance, consume a 140-character tweet. But a longer one necessitates them spending more time with it. And that’s a good thing for marketers.

And not to worry: the plan isn’t to have your 10,000 character tweet appear in its entirety in your contacts’ streams. It will look like a regular 140-character tweet with a call-to-action button where people can click to read more. Still, I expect that these longer tweets will stick out against the shorter tweets, providing a competitive advantage.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says the company’s researchers found a lot of people creating screen shots to share more text than would fit in 140 characters. With the new plan, marketers could actually put that text into a tweet, making it searchable, and therefore more findable.

3. You Can Better Express Your Thoughts

Raise yr hand if u hv evr shrtnd a tweet to fit it all in. I know, right? It takes away from the professionality of the tweet if you have to type like a teenager. So imagine a world where you can use unabbreviated words and use up as much space as you need to share your marketing message. You’ll get better results.

And if people don’t feel like clicking to your site to find out what your cryptic tweet is all about, they can get all the info they need from the longer tweet itself.

This time, I’m not going to grumble about changes to social media; I’m going to embrace them. I hope that we marketers find plenty of ways to leverage the new 10,000 character Twitter. Until then, c u l8r!

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Susan Guillory is the president of Egg Marketing & Communications, a marketing firm specializing in content writing and social media management. She frequently blogs about small business and marketing on sites including Cision, Forbes, AllBusiness, Small Business Trends, The Marketing Eggspert Blog and Tweak Your Biz. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.